Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Obama as Eisenhower

On 60 Minutes last night, he evoked another man who came to office promising to end an unpopular war and to restore confidence after the tenure of a president with abysmal approval ratings.

"I am a practical person," Barack Obama said, channeling the Dwight Eisenhower of more than half a century ago. "One of the things I'm good at is getting people in a room with ...different ideas who sometimes violently disagree with each other and finding common ground, and a sense of common direction. And that's the kind of approach that I think prevents you from making some of the enormous mistakes that we've seen over the last eight years."

Looking back at his two terms in the 1950s, Ike had taken pride in bringing together the vehemently opinionated and reasoning them into agreement, as he had done in World War II with such military divas as Gen. George Patton and Britain's Viscount Bernard Law Montgomery.

"Extremes to the right and left of any political dispute are always wrong," Eisenhower would say. "The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes are in the gutters."

Despite his own mantra of change and Republican efforts to tar him as a wild-eyed radical, Obama is temperamentally akin to Eisenhower in his reliance on persuasion and conciliation. If elected, he will face a much more divided America, but his instinct will be like Ike's--to reason and heal.